Digital Enhancement

“Digital Enhancement” is a sound installation consisting of an electrified Symphonion Brevet No. 28, a synthesizer, an amplifier and four headphones. The Symphonion musical box dates back to the beginning of the last century and its mechanical workings are combined with digital technology to convert it into a MIDI sequencer. The original programmed music, embossed on steel plates, can be played on the synthesizer, which is programmed to mimic the sounds of the Symphonion.

Martin Bircher, born in 1978 in Aarau, Switzerland, served his apprenticeship as an electrician and studied Fine Arts. In 2006 he migrated to Kouvola, Finland, where he works as a media artist and a full-time lecturer for Digital Media. The interest in his artistic work lies in combining antiquated items and cutting-edge technology in order to create objects with new purposes.

Ping Pong Rocking Chairs

Pong is one of the first computer games ever created. Ping Pong Rocking Chairs is Pasi Rauhala & Matti Niinimäki´s version of that game tradition. This interactive installation consists of 70’s furniture that is modded with modern technology to work as a game platform. Old rocking chairs have built-in motion sensors, which move the bats in the game. Two spectators sit in the chairs, swinging the bats to play the game visible on a television monitor.

Pasi Rauhala lives and works in Lohja, Finland. Rauhala deals with themes of everyday life. He often plays with scale, encouraging also people to play with. Rauhala’s works almost always contain a touch of humor about serious issues, which means that the works function on at least two different levels. Rauhala makes his works mainly from old and recycled materials.

Matti Niinimäki currently lives and works in Helsinki. His interactive works combine everyday gestures and phenomena with state-of-the-art technology and recycled materials creating new – and often confusing – collages. Everyday things like cooking and cleaning turn into performances or interactive installations.

Wish You Were There?

An interactive voyage through the world. Wish you were there? is an interactive photo- and a phone-booth that puts the phone caller in a virtual postcard.

After about 15 years of work in various fields of new/multi/hyper/webmedia Mr. Tomi Knuutila thinks he is so good in new media he even teaches it to others! Yes, in the University of Lapland, as a Lecturer in digital media. Tomi thinks that more important than the latest technology is simplicity – at least for the viewer of the artworks, who by default in the field of interactive media become participants, sometimes even co-creators of the artworks. He wants to build easy to use things which are interesting and fun.

Zoanthroid

The Zoanthroid is a kinetic object with origins in evolutionary biology and media technology. Its tuning-fork like tentacles are raised and lowered in organic movements to lull approaching prey.

Felix was born in Düsseldorf Germany in October 1978 under the name Felix Hartmut Beck. Twentyfive years later Google decided to change his name with one of their early translation services into the more international version ‘Hardmood’. Always interested in Lego, paper airplanes, art-projects and punk-rock, he loved to play around with technical stuff which, among other things, drove him to study New Media Design at the University of Arts Berlin and the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands, Spain). In 2007 he graduated from university and addionaly in 2011 he presented his Master Scholar project. Felix loves his wife, driving his Mini Cooper, clicking the internet and re-assembling technology to develop new things. He lives in Berlin where he works as Art Director and Concept Designer on different Design-, (Interactive) Architecture and Media-Art projects.

Illuminated Lakes

Interactive installations depicting the history of water quality in finnish lakes.

Tomi Dufva has MA in fine arts from Bergen art academy in Norway. Before that he has gratuated as a visual artists from Turku Art academy in Finland. Now he is continuing studies in art education in Aalto University. In his Art Tomi specializes in paintings, installations, programming and electronics with the aim to integrate these different mediums to meaningful experience. Tomi Dufva also teaches interactive art and creative programming in Muu Mediabase in Helsinki.

Mikko Dufva has an M.Sc. in systems analysis and environmental strategies from Helsinki university of technology. He works as an research engineer at the Freshwater center of the Finnish environment institute SYKE. During his free time he likes to tinker with electronics and is interested in embedding electronics to textiles and toys.

For Those Who See

In research of ours senses the installation ‘for those who see’ shows the beauty of the unseen. The impulse of sound creates a vortex air ring‚ invisible, as the sound itself. Only fog is demonstrating this aesthetic phenomenon. Individually released to the air, in the short moment of their appearance, our visual perception connects the single rings to patterns, surfaces, symbols or bodies.

Because of his early interest in technology, he decided to take his A-levels (Abitur) with an emphasis on electrical engineering at the OSZ – Energietechnik in Berlin. The following three years confirmed his interest in technology, but he also wanted to pursue a more creative way of studies. Therefore, he decided to study fashion design at the HTW Berlin in 2003 and, just one year later, turned to a more interdisciplinary course of studies at the University of Arts in Berlin. From there he finally graduated in 2010 in product and interaction design, with a project combining art, technology and design.In the year 2009 he became self-employed under the name bitsbeauty, and produced works such as a piece for the touring exhibition “Die Sprache des Geldes” at the Museum of Communication. With his knowledge he is not just an expert in only one thing, but could be a mediator between different fields of design, art and technology.His works were demonstrated amongst others in the ARS Electronica in Linz, at Japan Media Arts Festival and in the Museum of Communication Berlin.

Music Radar

Music Radar is a multimedia installation that enables the user to create and experience music in a new interactive fashion. Our goal was to create an experience where creating music is easy and fun. We also wanted to make the space surrounding the user to reflect the music. In our installation the user walks to a round table. On the table there is a beam that moves around it in a circular motion creating a radar-like visualization. On the edges of the table there are small buttons with different colors that can be placed on the table. When the radar beam hits a button a sound is played – the type of the sound depends on the color of the button. Different colors correspond to different kind of sounds and the distance of the button also affects the pitch
of the sound. When the user places multiple buttons on the table he/she can start to perceive how the buttons placed on different parts of the table affect the music differently. The music is also visualized ona wall next to the table by showing exploding firework-like effects. Again, the style of the effects depends on the sounds that are played at the specific moments.

Team Music Radar consists of four students who are in the final stages of their studies at Aalto University of Technology.

OOOO

OOOO is an animation installation that presents a spectacle of dance using motorized thaumatropes-a pre-cinematic animation device.

Born in Quebec in 1976, Amélie is working between Montréal and Zurich. She received her BA from Université du Québec à Montréal and MFA from Concordia University. Amélie is interested in the strategies individuals use to imprint their environment. Fabrics and fibres as material and metaphor allow her to explore these dimensions of human relations in time and space through installation, performative actions and drawing. Her particular focus with respect to fibers addresses questions of identity, social environments, the occupation of space and movement. She is a recipient of numerous grants and her work has been shown in Canada and Europe including: White Space (Zurich), BHVU Gallery (London), Stuttgart Filmwinter (Germany), Engramme Arts Centre (Switzerland), Truck Contemporary Art (Calgary), La Biennale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf (Canada), Gladstone Hôtel (Toronto), Diagonale and Dare-Dare (Montréal).

Pavitra Wickramasinghe was born in Sri Lanka and now lives in Montréal. Her practice is guided by wonder and the need to know how things work; to break down motion, videos and screens to their most elementary steps and builds them up again. Video projections become particles of light tangled in a net, screens become a mass of fibres and motion is suspended in still elements. Pavitra received her BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design and MFA from Concordia University. Selected exhibitions include: La Biennale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf (Canada), Stuttgart Filmwinter (Germany); Centro Cultural del Matadero (Spain); Galerie B-312 & L’Éspace Vidéographe (Montréal); Truck Gallery (Calgary); MadCat Film Festival (San Francisco); and Made In Video Festival (Denmark), among others. She is a recipient of numerous residencies, awards and grants.

Log in

LOG IN is built out of animated, used bank code cards. Number combinations are striked out by hand after they are used for the access. Drawn line discloses human presence. One bank code card with 80 numbers is repeated in the work in seven various sequences. Work contains 16 different cards in total. LOG IN has a structure close to music: it contains rhythm, pattern and repetition in which variations of the same theme appear and disappear. Logic of the numbers vanishes sequence by sequence. Number material loses its significance through endless repetitive pattern. Number zero or blank canvas wipes away past and the future leaving only the actual moment. How do we seize time and our presence in it?

Tanja Koljonen is a visual artist and currently studying photography in the University of Art and Design Helsinki. In her work she is interested to explore humankind and humanity in contact with culture and the environment.

Infra-red room

The infra red room is a light installation built from optical/mechanical devices and lit objects. The light used is infra red, meaning that it can not be perceived by human eye, but a CCD of a digital camera ”sees” it. Cell phone cameras are most suitable for this purpose since they often don’t have an infra red filter. Therefore most of us have the key for this ”coded” installation in our pockets.

Olli Suorlahti a.k.a. Olegtron* is a multi-enthusiast and junk collector/constructor fiddling somewhere on the broad field between science, technology, image, sound, music and entertainment. He builds e.g. interactive devices, that explore and illustrate phenomena he finds interesting.

MindBox

MindBox is an audience reactive video-and music triptych and can be operated with the lever and buttons of a modified one-armed-bandit. (slot machine) Originally created as a stand alone media installation singing songs from the swamps of Casino Capitalism & Total Body Control the ‘MindBox’ turned out to be an intuitive audio-visual musical instrument, which seems to break barriers between players, performers and audience. Based on the H.RP concepts (Humatic Re-Performing) the media slot machine allows for musical re-interpretation of sounds and images giving access to expressive parameters while preserving the character of the pre-recorded performance material. The player can let the instrument autonomously generate variations but take over the audio-visual & musical control at any time while staying in a consistent and continuous flow.

Christian Graupner is a Berlin based artist and film composer and has been guest artist at ZKM Karlsruhe. His earlier works were made up of drawings and experimental electronic music. Roberto Zappalà performer, choreographer, Norbert Schnell  IRCAM – Centre Pompidou, interactive music & sound design, Nils Peters Humatic, system developer & software artist. MindBox is produced by Humatic Berlin in co-operation with TMA Hellerau, BEK – Bergen Center for Electronic Arts, Norway and Compagnia Zappalà Danza. The MindBox technology is based on HUMAsystem and the FTM & Co libr